You are Not Broken
In this bonus episode of Fracture to Flourish, host Bryce Butler sits down with Heather Barnett, whose story surfaced in season one. The full conversation went deeper than what made it into the season, and this is that conversation.
Because of, Not Despite: What the System Never Told Him
In this bonus episode of Fracture to Flourish, host Bryce Butler sits back down with Mark Dessau, whose story surfaced briefly in season one. The full conversation went deeper than what made it into the season, and this is that conversation.
Never Unpacking: What Instability Does to a Child
In this bonus episode of Fracture to Flourish, host Bryce Butler sits back down with Gabe Clark, whose story threaded through Season One of the show. The full conversation went deeper than what made it into the season, and this is that conversation.
More Than Enough: How Community Can Change Foster Care
In this bonus episode of Fracture to Flourish, host Bryce Butler sits down for an extended conversation with Philip Pattison, executive director of Foster the City, an organization that equips churches to raise up foster families and wrap them in the kind of community support that makes the difference between giving up and keeping going.
Selling the Dream: Inside the Economics of Human Trafficking
In this bonus episode of Fracture to Flourish, host Bryce Butler shares an extended conversation with John Richmond, an attorney who has spent more than twenty-five years working at the intersection of prosecution, policy, and survivor care in the fight against human trafficking.ing process actually looks like, why victims sometimes defend their traffickers, and what twenty-five years of this work has taught him about where real change comes from. His answer to that last question isn't about policy. It's about survivors.
Proving I Exist
In this bonus episode of Fracture to Flourish, host Bryce Butler shares an extended conversation with Ella, a young woman who aged out of foster care at eighteen and is working to change the system that raised her.\
Beyond Rescue: Reform, Hope & Choosing Joy
In Episode 4 of Fracture to Flourish, host Bryce Butler follows Priscilla Roman’s story to ask what happens after a rescue story ends. Priscilla doesn’t describe herself as “trafficked.” Her story is what it looks like when a former foster youth with almost no safety net steps into the strip club at twenty—and finds her body treated like a commodity. But this final episode widens the lens beyond one life.
Designed to Fail: Lost in the System
In Episode 3 of Fracture to Flourish, host Bryce Butler follows a single composite case file to show how a foster care system not designed around children can leave youth invisible, unprotected, and easy to traffic. Instead of starting with a trafficker, this episode starts with the paper trail: routine notes, missed court dates, closed runaway reports, copy‑pasted case notes, and the quiet ways warnings can die in separate inboxes. Along the way, you’ll hear how placement instability, isolation, and unmet basic needs can create the space where exploitation takes root.
Targeted: Grooming in Plain Sight
In Episode 2 of Season 2 of Fracture to Flourish, Bryce Butler follows the pattern that so often hides in plain sight: affirmation → dependency → control. We start in a bedroom, with a late‑night message that sounds like attention, not danger. Then we trace how traffickers use the same vulnerabilities foster youth carry—instability, isolation, unmet needs, and digital access—to turn “connection” into a business model.
Nobody Noticed: The Making of a Target
In the Season 2 premiere of Fracture to Flourish, host Bryce Butler traces how trafficking risk is often built long before a trafficker appears. Through survivor testimony and expert insight, this episode follows the pathway that can start with abuse and instability at home, continue through placement moves and missed warning signs, and end with a young person searching for belonging in the wrong places.
Introducing: Fracture to Flourish - Season 2: Aging Out: The Hidden Pipeline
Season Two: Aging Out: The Hidden Pipeline investigates how foster care instability, isolation, and unmet needs can create a pathway to exploitation, and what it takes to interrupt that pathway before harm becomes a life sentence. Across four episodes, host Bryce Butler follows the pattern from multiple angles: the early warning signs that get missed, grooming that hides in plain sight, system breakdowns that let kids disappear, and the reforms and relationships that make prevention real.
Breaking the Cycle: Resilience and Success
We're back with our third and final episode of Fracture to Flourish, where we turn our attention to hope and transformation. This episode builds on our previous conversations about youth aging out of foster care, but with a focus on solutions and change.
Caught in the System: Foster Care to Prison
What exactly do foster youth age out of? In this powerful episode, we step inside the foster care system to understand the lived reality behind the statistics—and why so many youth, especially young men, end up incarcerated after leaving care.
Surviving on the Margins: Foster Care to Poverty
In our debut episode, we follow three extraordinary journeys of resilience as former foster youth navigate life after aging out at 18. Ella, Mark, and Heather share how they transformed systemic challenges into personal triumph—from drafting a Foster Youth Bill of Rights to building a career at Microsoft. We explore the stark realities many face: 1 in 4 becoming incarcerated, 1 in 5 immediately homeless, and half struggling to find employment. Community leaders Lance Villio and Tom Baldwin reveal innovative approaches to support these transitions.
Introducing: Fracture to Flourish - Season 1: Aging Out
Welcome to Fracture to Flourish, a podcast from Access Ventures illuminating untold stories of resilience.
Season one, "Aging Out," reveals the raw reality of the 20,000 young adults who exit foster care yearly without support networks. Through authentic conversations with both those who've experienced the system firsthand and the advocates fighting for change, we uncover the human stories behind the statistics—journeys of struggle and strength that transform fracture into flourishing.

